Alignment
by mirroredsakura
Summary: Cloudcentric. Caught between those he left behind in Midgar and the ones he lost in the otherworld, Cloud is made to choose.


**Alignment**

**Notes:** Written as a sample post for the **final_kingdom** RP on LJ which I randomly decided I want to join (and now own). o.O; Anyway. My form of timeline works like this. Post-FFVII, Cloud is busy angsting like he... always is, and he gets yanked through the open doors into one of the newly-interconnected worlds of Kingdom Hearts. Which means he's the real, original Cloud wandering around in worlds where he sees alternate universe versions of his friends and lost loved ones. Then he gets yanked back to his world finding it carrying on as if he'd never disappeared. Bam, Advent Children. I haven't finished playing KH2 yet, so I don't know what happens. Thus, for now, this premise works since I don't know if KH2 reveals something that affects this story. Shrug.

**xxxx**

Cloud, back in his designated world, had not been happy. Point in fact, he'd been miserable. There had been no comfort. For just a short while, he'd been able to escape the Planet, travel to worlds he hadn't dreamed could exist. He'd met a cocky little boy flanked by an irritable talking duck mage and a tall talking dog soldier with clanking shield. He'd come across a backstabbing Lord of the Underworld, an enormous three-headed canine, and a lionheart with a ninja companion he'd once called his friend.

He'd found people he'd lost and left behind. He'd been stunned when Yuffie hadn't recognized him. His heart had hurt when Aeris had stepped up to him and for a moment he'd thought she didn't recognize him either.

But she had the eyes of the Ancients, and she'd held out her arms to him, alive, well, _happy_ in that other world that was not his own. He'd collapsed against her in an infrequent moment of weakness, shaking with the tears that would not come. Because there she'd been _real_. It had not been a dream of ephemeral gardens and half-remembered flower perfumes and a wispy figure of Fenrir standing over him as she whispered her forgiveness.

And there had been Sephiroth. A Sephiroth who had not been under Jenova's sway, who had been content to seek out the best of fighters that came to him in the Coliseum. Content to wait for Cloud to come to him, like the good little puppet he was. But there had been no mindgames, no insanity lurking behind those slit-pupiled eyes that glowed with Mako. There had been no sacrifice of a little boy desperate for the Reunion. There had just been a calm unfurling of a black wings, a drawing of swords, and a challenge to a Showdown of Fate.

He'd found them; the girl he'd watched die right in front of him, the man that he'd _killed_. And Zack... could Zack be there, somewhere? Waiting for him on some obscure world, laughing with the natives and trading stories of friends and family and the glory he'd once shared?

He hadn't been able to find out. The Planet had drawn him back, pulled him back into her arms and raised him up to be her Knight in a second battle with a Sephiroth that simply refused to be just a memory. To be the one who held a young silver-haired boyclone crying for his mother and melting away into the Lifestream while his brothers struck out against him.

He didn't want this world, its denizens staring at him in awe, as the bringer of the healing waters that cured the Geostigma, the destroyer of Bahamut Sin, as the one who had saved them all. He didn't want to stay here, yearning for the past he couldn't have, for the people he couldn't save, and for the memories that the Cetra wouldn't or _couldn't_ give him.

So, when he felt the world shudder around him, and a door rose up large, glittering and white against one wall of the church, he knew what was happening. When he heard the distinct sound of the doors unlocking, and the hollow sound of the tumbrils click, he held his breath. And when the doors swept open and the ringing voice of a boy he knew so well calling for his help echoed in the confines of the ruined church he called sanctuary, there was no holding back the joy he felt rising in his heart as he tightened his grip his sword and ran straight into the blinding white light.

Perhaps this time there would be no cause to return.


End file.
